Spectrum
by mysticVigil
Summary: Obscure, postHBP look at an essentially captive Draco. Written as the third companion to 'This' and 'She'.


Disclaimer: I don't Harry Potter, or anything that may, in some distant way, be related. All characters are copyright the fabulous J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury Publishing and, I'm sorry to say, I don't own them.

Summary: Obscure, post-HBP drabble focusing on Draco. Essentially DP.

A/N – Possible standalone, originally written as the wrap-up companion thingy to "She" and "This". I like this one a lot actually, and I think it has cured me of the need to write DP. The title refers to the colors mentioned in the ficlet; I didn't realise there were so many. Enjoy!

Started: A long time ago.

Finished: Sunday, 04.23.06

**Spectrum**

_There used to be a light. Her skin, so pale. Paler than his, almost transparent when she turned her face towards the sun, and it was then that he could see all the thoughts floating around inside of her. Swimming near the surface, little tendrils of truth wispily touching the whiteness of her, almost afraid to press too hard and color her chinadoll skin._

_Castles and daydreams and pink coral lipstick smudges on some boy's collar: that's what he would have liked to give her, back where there used to be a light._

_She so seldom goes out in the sun now and ever. And he tries to trace her skin in the dark but he doesn't see where it hurts her most and she whimpers. She whimpers, and he can't hold her close._

_Castles and daydreams and pink coral lipstick, and Draco closes his eyes and finds perfect blackness. It makes no difference._

--

The room is dark and there is a slickness on the floor that is nameless, and if it has a name Draco is thankful he doesn't know it. He doesn't know anything.

He's thankful, and his head is close to implosion. Emerald green ink spills across the page and blots his hands and his brain and almost writes a story but then it ignites.

He wants to tell her that he understands something, anything, everything but everything is burning his touch, the parchment, the quill, the ink like his skin.

Emerald green ink spills across his skin but he's learned not to cry. No one cries, not anymore: understanding and the unknown are equidistant from choice. A shot in the dark, like emerald green ink.

--

_Sometimes he will glance at her picture and feel something inside him move but it always passes and he goes to other girls. He can touch them; they won't recoil. It isn't the same and their skin isn't as white but it will do. It will._

_And when he isn't with the girls he speaks to his father, with his father, tells his father he wants to wear a black hood. His father says he is proud; that's all Draco ever wanted to hear. It doesn't feel as good as he expected but it still feels good._

_So the training continues and he thinks he's smart. The sparks and incantations are vindication, the sparks and the incantations and the unanticipated sense of belonging. His father teaches him before indoctrination begins. His father is teaching._

_And one day eyes peer through white curtains of hair and are raised over the morning newspaper and his father tells him the time has come to prove himself. With a sneer… without words but with a sneer… Draco says he is ready. He will prove himself and he is ready._

_The night is dark. Fog plays across the masks around him like clouds play across the moon. Then the faces are uncovered, pallid grey and moving closer and his father's smirk like a branding, this is a branding. He is learning, please let him be learning something because this mark on his skin hurts so much._

_The night is dark but the sky is purple-pink promise beneath the clouds. Sometimes he will glance at her picture and feel something inside him move but he always goes to other girls._

--

The letter is sent. In it all the things he never said poke and prod in a frenzied queue, fighting for prominence in her mind. His letters are hasty, just illegibly legible; his fragments are blotched. Little glimpses of frightened meaning hide, twined through his half-truths.

How the floor is cold under his cheek. How the stone echoes announce hard footsteps that make his heart race. How he reaches out to touch her skin, hair, lips, laugh and she's not there. How it feels as if she was never there

He is sorry, sorry, a million times sorry. The absence of her face is infinite penance, and hazy absolution evades him. Now he will believe in God. Now he will take out his eyes if it means being able to smell her, or hear her, or touch her. He wonders if this stems from non-choice or is rooted in love but all he knows are shots in the dark.

All he knows is his wish for her: Castles and daydreams and pink coral lipstick.

--

_It was an arrogant summer and he experienced it all._

_Now she takes on his demeanor and strokes his hair and only smiles when they're alone. He misses her smile and wishes he had caught it before when something was possible but now admittance is a fault. She strokes his hair._

_Her fingertips are seldom and the perfect dark flees. Instead he chases pink promise and the horizon tells a story of maybes. He tells himself that she can wait for someday, and she can wait for something, and she can._

_But she is planning. Planning, planning, she talks of family and flight and future. She talks of pearls around her neck and pearl skin, flawless; she talks of a million nights together, a million kisses in her hair. Her fingertips sweep his cheek and when they are alone, she talks._

_And he can't tell her about the nights he leaves her sleeping and the way his heart beats in the hall and the completion of his sinister purpose. There is a future before togetherness and that future is now._

_She is planning for the last time. Soundlessly he steals the dawn, puts it in his cloak pocket and postpones her pink coral lipstick. Soundlessly, he cries for the last time._

_He misses her for the first and she never knows._

--

Mistakes. This was never meant to happen. He wouldn't have chosen this prison, this insurmountable loneliness that leaves him blank, blank, emerald green ink setting fire to his skin. But he is not a Seer. He is a stupid-little-boy.

And stupid-little-boys make stupid-little-boy choices.

He sits in a corner and focuses on her easy, floating thoughts. Maybe he will read them someday in a letter but maybe is an empty word. Maybe she is still alive.

Outside is an impossibility but he imagines. There is a war and there is hate, there is enough hate to destroy everything beautiful and she loves him. She is beautiful. In his mind's eye he can see her pale skin and its lattice of dark bruises and he hopes she's dead, he hopes she escaped. He hopes she escaped through death.

And when he reaches for the light… when he closes his eyes and finds perfect blackness for the last time…

When he sees her there will be castles: castles and daydreams and pink coral lipstick.


End file.
